Twist of the Blade (4 page)

“I can help you with that too,” said the nurse. “But we’ll
take it easy. Hold on one second.” She reached across him and undid the cuff of the blood-pressure monitor. “You’ll have to walk with the IV pole. Now, try sitting up.”

Wally pushed himself up with his elbows. A wave of dizziness swept over him, but after a moment it passed. “All right,” he said cautiously.

“Swing your feet over the side.”

Wally did so. The nurse opened the drawer of the side table and took out a pair of shapeless hospital slippers, like little cloth bags with elastic around the top, and slipped them
on his feet. She stood next to the bed, offering her arm.

“Now try standing. I’ve got you.”

Wally slid off the bed until his feet touched the floor, took her arm, and slowly stood up. Another wave of dizziness hit him, and he gripped her arm tighter, but the spell only lasted an instant. He took a deep breath. “I’m good,” he said.

“Excellent!” The nurse smiled. “Then let’s get you to the bathroom.”

He held onto her as they inched across the room, past the old man in the other bed. “What about my parents?” Wally asked.

“I’m afraid I don’t know.” The nurse sounded disapproving. “As I said, a Ms. Mueller brought you in, but I wasn’t on duty then. I’ve only spoken to a Mrs. Carson. Our records indicate your parents have given her authority to approve medical treatment for you.”

Wally nodded, and rather wished he hadn’t. “She looks after us...me...when my parents are away.” He glanced past the nurse into the hallway. “Is she here now?”

“I haven’t seen her since my shift started,” said the nurse, sounding more disapproving than ever.

“What about my sister?”

“I’m sorry, Wally,” the nurse said. “I’m afraid no one has come by.” She smiled again. “But it’s only a little after noon. Your friends won’t be out of school for hours yet. I’m sure you’ll have visitors this evening.” They’d reached the bathroom door. “Now, are you okay to use the toilet by yourself?”

“Yes,” Wally said hastily, ear-tips burning.

“Good,” the nurse said briskly. “When you’re finished, or if you find you
do
need help, press the call button.”

Wally started to nod, remembered to stop himself just in time, and said, “Thank you.” He made his cautious way into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He managed to do what he needed to do, but by the time he had finished washing his hands and pressed the call button he was more than ready to return to bed, and eager to take the painkillers the nurse offered.

As the nurse helped him lie down again, he couldn’t help thinking there was something he needed to do, something important...something about Flish...
My loving sister who won’t even come see me in the hospital
, he thought bitterly...but he couldn’t remember what it was.

I must have hit my head
really
hard.

The painkillers began to take hold, pushing down the ache in his skull but also filling his brain with fuzziness.

Ariane will come see me...once she knows.
The thought seemed to come from far away.

Ariane. Whatever he was forgetting had something to do with her...and Flish...

But the memory wouldn’t come, and a moment later he slipped once more into the dark waters of sleep.

~~~

Ariane, despite another sleepless night, dragged herself to school early on Thursday morning and hung around the front steps, hoping to catch Wally when he arrived. She wanted to apologize for not showing up for lunch the day before, but this time it was Wally who didn’t show.

She kept looking for him in the hallway between classes, without success. At lunch, though she desperately wanted to find a quiet corner of the library and take a nap, she sat at their usual table – but still, no Wally.

It wasn’t until the first afternoon class break that Ariane finally found out what had happened to him. She was getting a drink from a water fountain when she heard a girl behind her say to a friend, “Did you hear about Wally Knight? Slipped on a patch of ice behind the gym. Split his head right open. You can still see the blood on the ground!”

“Gross!” said her friend, although she sounded more fascinated than disgusted.

Ariane, shocked, spun around. “Is he all right?”

The girls, both ninth graders, looked surprised. “Nobody’s saying,” said the girl who had spoken first.

“I bet he’s in a coma,” said the second. “Probably a vegetable. I saw this documentary once about head injuries...”

“A vegetable?” The first girl giggled. “What kind?”

The second girl laughed too. “Probably a radish. With his red hair –”

The shard strapped to Ariane’s middle blazed, flooding her with the urge to wipe those silly grins off the girls’
faces. Water gurgled from the fountains, even though no
body was twisting the knobs. The girls didn’t notice, and Ariane clamped down on her anger. But something of her rage must have registered on her face, because the girls blanched and skittered away, whispering and looking over their shoulders as they fled.

Ariane leaned her forehead against the cold tile of the hallway wall.
He’s
not
dead
, she thought.
He’s
not
a vegetable. He
can’t
be.

She straightened and hurried to the main office.

“Is he a good friend of yours?” the secretary said with a sympathetic smile, after Ariane had asked about Wally. “Well, the woman who’s looking after him while his parents are away, Mrs....” she hesitated.

“Carson,” supplied Ariane.

“Yes, that’s right. Mrs. Carson said he suffered a concussion and needed a few stitches. They’re keeping him at the General Hospital for observation, then he’ll be recuperating at home for a few days. I don’t think we’ll see him at school before next week.”

“Thank you,” Ariane said. The bell rang as she went out into the hall, which meant she was late for Social Studies, but right now she didn’t care. She couldn’t go visit Wally right after school, since she had two hours of remedial algebra with Mr. Merle. But maybe after supper...Aunt Phyllis would surely want to go, too; she’d drive her....

Social studies dragged by, and physics after that, details of Canadian human rights legislation and the properties of waves lost in the fog of her fatigue and worry. When physics ended, other students fled home or headed off to practise football or fencing or French horn, but she plodded down to Mr. Merle’s classroom for remedial algebra...although as far as she could tell very little remediation was occurring. Her fatigue-dulled mind still couldn’t get a solid grip on the subject.

Those two hours, too, eventually ground to their end. At last, Ariane headed toward the side exit of the school.

Her footsteps echoed in the empty but brightly lit corridors. She pushed open the metal door and emerged into the drive between Oscana Collegiate and St. Dunstan High School, the Catholic school next door. The drive was blocked at one end by a swinging gate, locked to keep cars out of the alley behind the school...
the alley where Wally must have fallen and hurt himself
, Ariane thought as she reached the gate. For a moment she considered walking down to the corner of the gym where the accident must have happened (“You can still see the blood!” the girl had said), but she pushed the notion away, disgusted by her own morbid curiosity. Instead she headed in her usual direction, toward the city-owned tennis courts behind the Catholic school. On the other side of them she could nip across Winnipeg Street to 17th Avenue, then duck through a couple of alleys to get to Wallace Street. It had become her favourite shortcut. It not only saved her half a block’s walking – and these days, even half a block seemed like a very long distance indeed – it let her approach her house without being seen by anyone who might be watching it from the street.

The two courts, side by side inside a chain-link fence, lay in deep shadow cast by the rows of small trees that bordered the fence to the south, east and west. Against the lights of Winnipeg Street just beyond they looked more like black cardboard cutouts than real trees. Ariane exhaled white clouds, and the cold bit her cheeks, making her feel more alert than she had all day.

She entered the courts through an opening in the west side of the fence and started across to the matching opening on the eastern side. But just as she stepped from the first court to the second, four figures, black cutouts against the streetlights, rose in front of her, blocking her path. She stopped, a surge of adrenaline scouring away her fatigue. “Who’s there?”
Is Major trying again?

“Guess,” said a familiar voice.

Ariane’s fists clenched. “Flish. Shania. Stephanie. Cassandra.”

“Got it in one,” said Flish.

Feet crunching on the court surface, the four spread out to surround her, menacing, shadowy figures trailing clouds of breath-fog. Ariane turned this way and that, trying to watch them all at once. “Shouldn’t you be with your brother at the hospital?” she threw at Flish.

“I hate hospitals,” Flish said.

“Then you’d better leave,” Ariane growled. “Or that’s where you’ll end up. You know what I can do.”

As she spoke, Ariane listened for nearby water. A faint, faint song, metallic, constrained, came from beneath the ground, probably a pipe feeding the sprinkler system in the sports fields behind Oscana. But exhaustion was like a straitjacket constraining her powers. The water ran too deep. She couldn’t call it.

“Oh, we know you can do all kinds of tricks with water,” said Flish. “But look around, Airy-Anne. There’s no water here. Nothing but you...and us. And we owe you, Airy-Anne. We owe you big time.” Her eyes, two yellow sparks reflecting the school’s lights, were all Ariane could see of her face. Behind Flish, a car drove down Winnipeg Street, trailing wisps of exhaust.

Ariane’s heart pounded so hard she thought Flish must surely be able to hear it. The last time these girls had caught her outside, they had tried to strip her, intending to send humiliating photos to classmates. She’d fought them off with her newly awakened powers. She’d made them run away again when they’d threatened her in a school hallway just after she and Wally had returned from Yellowknife. This time...well, despite the location, she didn’t think they intended to challenge her to a friendly game of tennis.

I want to visit Wally
, she thought,
but not by joining him in the hospital!

Worse, what if they found the shard strapped to her waist? If they took it, and Rex Major found out, he’d have it the next day. And he wouldn’t hesitate to kill them to get it.

As sudden as the flick of a light switch, her fear flipped to anger – anger fuelled by the shard. Haunted by a demon, a target of one of the richest, most ruthless men in the world, saddled with the impossible task of finding the five shards of Excalibur before he could – she didn’t have time for these petty, bullying, stupid
children
.

The sword-tip, hot as a brand against her skin, poured strength mingled with rage into her, and she embraced them both, welcoming the hot, furious energy, so different from the Lady’s cool power.

The faint song of the water in the pipe beneath the courts crescendoed,
pianissimo
to
fortissimo
, offering itself to her, begging for her command.
Come to me
, Ariane sang, silently and without words.
Come to me!

The ground shook. Flish, Shania, Cassandra, and Stephanie, tightening the ring around her, staggered.
Come to me!
Ariane sang again.
Come now!

Three metres behind Flish, the tennis court erupted. The four girls spun, mouths agape. Water geysered ten metres into the sky, hurling pieces of pavement like shrapnel. A chunk of asphalt smashed into Stephanie’s face, knocking her flat on her back. She staggered to her feet, clutching her bloody nose, and fled, weeping.

One down, three to go
, Ariane thought, keeping her gaze on Flish. Always before she had held herself back.
Not this time!
She formed the spurting water into a taut, swirling tendril, and cracked it like a whip against Flish’s side. Wally’s sister flew through the air like a rag doll. She hit the pavement with a sickening crunch, rolled over and over, slammed into one of the net posts, and lay very still.

The violence she had unleashed shocked Ariane out of her fury. For an instant, the shard’s power stuttered.
What have I done? I’ve got to stop, I’ve got to –

But the moment passed. The shard’s power roared through her again, drowning her doubts. She turned contemptuously from Flish to Shania and Cassandra.

They had frozen in place, but as Ariane raised the whip of water they fled. A flick of her hand, and the water swept their feet out from under them. They thudded to the pavement, and something cracked like a breaking twig. Screaming, sobbing, Shania stumbled back to her feet, cradling her left arm against her side, and staggered away. Cassandra lay on her back, mouth open, gasping for the breath the impact had knocked from her lungs.